Renewed conflict possible in Mali - US

Mali's Prime Minister Moussa Mara speaks to the press at the airport in Bamako on May 18, 2014, after travelling to the northern city of Kidal, following clashes between separatist militants and the army left dozens dead. Picture: Fabien Offner

Mali's Prime Minister Moussa Mara speaks to the press at the airport in Bamako on May 18, 2014, after travelling to the northern city of Kidal, following clashes between separatist militants and the army left dozens dead. Picture: Fabien Offner

Published May 20, 2014

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Bamako - The United States warned on Monday that northern Mali risked sliding back into war and called for the government and Tuareg separatists to return to talks after deadly clashes in a traditional rebel stronghold at the weekend.

The Malian army was preparing to launch an assault on the northern town of Kidal, where at least eight soldiers and eight civilians including six government officials were killed when rebels attacked the regional governor's office on Saturday while Prime Minister Moussa Mara was in the town.

Thirty-two civil servants taken hostage in the attack were released on Monday after negotiations, according to Radhia Achouri, spokesman for MINUSMA, the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita outlined a twin-track strategy in a national address on Monday evening, and said the government would pursue negotiations with the separatists but also that the army would play its role.

“The authors of the hostage-taking and summary executions will be pursued by national and international justice because these crimes amount to crimes against humanity,” he said.

“Our forces of defence and security... will carry out fully the mission that the Malian constitution assigns to them,” he said.

Mali's international partners have been pushing for a final, negotiated settlement to a long cycle of Tuareg independence uprisings since al-Qaeda-linked fighters hijacked a Tuareg rebellion in 2012 and seized northern Mali.

After a French-led intervention drove the Islamists from major cities and towns last year, Mali's government and separatist groups signed a deal in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou to hold talks about greater autonomy for the north.

But the lines between the independence fighters and their erstwhile Islamist allies remain blurred, and it has been difficult to get government and separatists to sit down together.

“We are very concerned about what happened, and that the response might lead to this region going back into conflict,” US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Linda Thomas-Greenfield told journalists in Paris on Monday.

“It is important for the government to continue to talk to them (the rebels) and work on a reconciliation that will bring them back into the fold.”

Kidal is the stronghold of the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) and, while the rebels now claim to control the town, they said they had only fought back after coming under attack by the Malian army.

Attaye Ag Mohamed, a spokesman for the group based in Kidal, denied government accusations that the MNLA had renewed its previous alliance with armed Islamist groups.

“They can say what they want. They're just trying to dupe the Malian people,” Ag Mohamed told Reuters.

MINUSMA urged both sides to refrain from violence that could endanger civilians. The force is not yet at its full strength of 13 000 and, while it was present in Kidal on Saturday it was unable to stop the fighting.

“The rebels and the army are reinforcing their positions,” an elected official in Kidal, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, told Reuters. “I'm shut up in my house. The next hours will be decisive.”

France, which led an offensive against armed Islamist groups but pressed Bamako to negotiate with the northern separatists, said it would stay out of any fighting between the army and the Tuareg rebels.

“We are not there to intervene with regard to tensions between Malians,” French army spokesman Colonel Gilles Jaron said. “We are 1 600 (soldiers) in Mali now and their role is to fight armed terrorist groups.”

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian cancelled a visit to Mali this weekend in light of the latest developments though he will still travel to Chad in a trip designed to announce new French policy, officials said.

France is seeking to reduce its numbers in Mali to around 1 000 while redeploying soldiers elsewhere in the region to tackle the rising threat of Islamic militant groups that have spread across West Africa since last year's intervention.

“This is a real turning point in the crisis,” said Rinaldo Depagne, West Africa programs director for the conflict prevention think tank International Crisis Group.

“It's clearly the end of the Ouagadougou agreement and the situation is as it was at the beginning of the crisis.” - Reuters

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